It is hard to lose a friend. It’s even harder when that friend is also your co-worker, your roommate, and the center of gravity for your immediate social circle. When Cliff Burton died in a fateful bus accident in 1986, the rest of Metallica was force to carry on without the man who had filled all of these roles in their lives. After a two-year gestation period, their anguish over Burton’s loss took shape as …And Justice For All. Ironically, AJFA’s lyrics have little bearing on Burton. In fact, the bass guitar barely exists on the album whatsoever; Metalllica mixed new bassist Jason Newsted (who would hang on with Metallica for three further albums) almost completely out of the picture. AJFA is a cold, dry-sounding album; it is the product of repression and self-denial.

AJFA is also Metallica’s most ambitious album. Musically, the band took advantage of the desiccated production to push themselves to their technical limits. The maze of unpredictable pauses and rhythmic accent changes through which the band wrench themselves over the course of the album laid the groundwork for a whole generation of technically inclined metal bands. (Meshuggah, for instance, started their career as an AJFA-era Metallica knockoff.) “Blackened” is James Hetfield’s most vicious rhythm-picking workout of a career built primarily on rhythm-picking workouts. Hammett’s soloing reaches its spiraling pinnacle here. Even Ulrich — normally so stiff and klutzy — throws plenty of curveballs.

Perhaps in an effort to avoid the subject of his fallen bandmate, Hetfield uses AJFA to launch a bitter assault on the culture around him. Though most of its lyrics decry various forms of hypocrisy and social injustice, AJFA features a couple of notable exceptions. The first is “Dyers Eve,” in which Hetfield addresses an acrid open letter to his parents. He would return to such highly personal themes on all of Metallica’s future albums, but this song is the most successful example of its species. The second is “One.” Based on the 1938 anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun, “One” details the suffering of a quadriplegic WWI veteran who is too horribly crippled to even ask for euthanasia. Its terrifying subject matter is scarcely the stuff of platinum sales, but Metallica’s decision to break from years of recalcitrance and finally make a music video for the song helped it become their first Top 40 hit and launched the more commercial phase of their career.